Paramedics "worked and worked" on a 4-year-old boy who tumbled out of a window and fell headfirst on the concrete 20 feet below, a police spokesman said.

But "he didn't have a chance," said Scott Douglas, spokesman for the Molalla Police Department.

The boy died Saturday night while playing with other children during a housewarming party at the family's new home. Police would not release his name.

The death is a sad reminder of the dangers that upper-story windows pose for small children, especially in spring and summer when people open their houses to let in the breeze.

Nicole DeIorio, an emergency room doctor at OHSU Hospital, said a warm spell several weeks ago marked the first window-fall patients of the season. The injuries were wide-ranging -- from one child who suffered a bad head injury to another who was unscathed. In the latter case, the parents thought their child was still upstairs.

"Then the kid was suddenly knocking on the front door," DeIorio said. "...People don't think it could happen to their child, but it really is common in the summer in Portland."

Safety experts recommend keeping furniture away from windows and making sure there's no furniture available that children can easily move next to a window.

"Because toddlers are pretty creative -- if they have to move a chair to get to the window, they'll do it," said William Lennarz, director of pediatric emergency medicine at Legacy Emanuel Children's Hospital.

Experts also recommend installing safety devices, such as child-safe screens or window guards, which resemble a baby gate that fits over the window.

Portland area hospitals typically see more than a dozen children who are injured from window falls each year. Last year's numbers included three Canby toddlers who fell from windows within four days of one another. All three survived, even though one fell headfirst into a flower bed and another onto concrete. All three pushed out screens that were meant to keep insects out, not children in.

Nationwide, more than 4,000 children, most 5 years old or younger, visit emergency rooms each year because they fall from windows. An average of 18 die.

Window falls have been a long-recognized problem in some cities with tall buildings. New York City passed a law in the 1970s that required owners of multiple-story apartments to provide window-safety devices for renters with young children.

The issue made headlines locally in January after a jury awarded $560,000 to a 2 1/2-year-old Gresham girl who plummeted headfirst from the second-story of the duplex her family rented. The jury faulted the management company, which hadn't installed safety devices or warned the family of the danger posed by the unusually low windows.